There were 49 plays being staged in Mumbai on the last weekend of May this year. A range of different genres, the majority unabashedly commercial, flooded the theatres that weekend. There were thrillers in Gujarati and Marathi, social dramas in Hindi, Gujarati and Marathi, ‘sex’ comedies in all three languages as well as English, and out-and-out slapstick comedies as well. Experiemental theatre is limited to a handful of productions, and serious Hindi theatre restricted to the long running Court Martial on Dalits in the army, and the very successful tearjerker on Partition, Jisne Lahore Nahi Dekhiya,Woh Janmiya Nahi.
Looking at the huge range of Marathi drama on display, without a single Vijay Tendulkar, Mahesh Elkunchwar, Vasant Shankar Kanetkar script in sight, it is interesting that several young directors are waking up to the possibility of reviving the classical canon. Among them is the delightful children’s classic Albattaya Galbattaya (someone who is a nobody) with an excellent comic actor, Vaibhav Mangle, playing the witch, and a revival of the all time favourite Ekach Pyala, many moons after its first production and this proved to be a trail blazer in Marathi theatre. As the title suggests,it is the story of the gradual descent of the main protagonist into alcoholism.
The beginnings of Marathi theatre are credited to Vishnudas Amrit Bhave who dramatised stories from the Ramayana for the Sangli court in 1843. Moving to Bombay to perform at the Grant Road Theatre, his plays are considered to be the first ticketed shows in Marathi that Mumbai witnessed.
Marathi theatre subsequently travelled on twin paths—scripted plays without music on nationalist and social themes, and the ‘sangeet natak’ popular tradition. The Kirloskar Natak Mandali prospered from 1875 to 1935, drawing on Carnatic and Hindustani music styles as well as folk ditties and religious keertans. Sharada written in 1899 brought the Henrik Ibsen-inspired model of the social theatre as it delved into the prevailing custom of marrying young girls to old men.
In the 1950s inter-college one-act play competitions were the rage and soon after, Vijaya Mehta began the Rangayan movement, transforming Marathi theatre forever. From the gentle social plays of Kanetkar and later Jayant Dalvi, to the provocative drama of Tendulkar and Elkunchwar, the Marathi stage has given us several memorable scripts.
Today, Albattaya Galbattaya is a larger-than-life production with special effects and an original musical score. Directed by Chinmay Manglekar, it is a classical fairytale. In a fantasy kingdom, the king imprisons his daughter when he hears an astrologer say she will marry a good-for-nothing. And you can imagine the rest of this fairytale!
The writer is a Delhi-based theatre director and can be recahed at feisal.alkazi@rediffmail.com